278 - Black Narcissus, 1947, United Kingdom. Dir. Michael Powell.

Thursday, October 5, 2017

278 - Black Narcissus, 1947, United Kingdom.  Dir. Michael Powell.

Powell and Pessburger have turned to color.  Glorious Technicolor.

The setting is breathtaking.  A defunct harem atop a vertical cliff in the Indian Himalayas is converted into a new convent school and dispensary.

There is no parapet or fencing along the edge, and the platform on which the bellringer must stand to ring the bell places her on the edge of death, the bell itself being so large as to require a body's full physical effort to pull the rope.

The altitude is high.  The air is thin and pure.  The updrafts gust steadily.

The harem has a holdover, Angu Ayah, a "dirty old bird" who longs for the good old days of wanton feasting.  It also contains the Hindu art, built in, in the latticework, the floor fountain, the tile tapestries, the paintings--replete with erotic imagery.

The British agent is there, Mr. Dean, who wears shorts, an open shirt with a hairy chest, and a feathered hat.  He comically rides a short pony.  He himself wrote the letter requesting the nuns (Anglican, not Catholic) to come; however, he does not believe in them and expects them not to last till the latter rains.

He brings them a young woman, Kanchi, mysterious, sensual, rejected by her fiance, hungry for affection, potential trouble.

The Young General comes as well, enthusiastic about learning, eager to please.  He brings his own schedule.  He appeals to know everything about Christianity and faith in Jesus Christ.  He is targeted by Kanchi.

An old Holy Man sits atop the mountain, on their property, never speaking, never moving, a distraction from what they are trying to do.

The Mother Superior assigns the youngest nun, Sister Clodagh, to be the leader of this new mission, and Deborah Kerr in a moment of brilliant acting rises up on the inside with ambitious pride, which the viewer can see only in a spark in her eyes and the tiniest of twitches in her lips, as she retains restraint, physically still, outwardly stoic, humbly accepting her propitious assignment.  Yet on the inside it is clear she wants this.

If only she knew what was to come.

This place resists change.

The very winds blow against it.

The villagers, according to Mr. Dean, are like children and will turn on you in a moment.

Mr. Dean himself loves pleasure and sings about it after showing up drunk at the Christmas service.  His constant presence with his bare flesh and wanton locks does not help.

Sister Clodagh has her own past, a boy whom she loved and wanted to marry, whose imminent departure from Ireland to America drove her to leave first, for a life of devotion.  Her memories had been forgotten until Mr. Dean came along.

Kanchi dances in their buildings, her round body curving and head shifting as if she has just stepped out of a picture on the wall.  Drawing attention away from the good work.

The Young General innocently introduces the Black Narcissus, a fragrance from the narcissus plant, a genus that includes daffodils and jonquils, which he has ironically brought back from a trip to London, and which proves to be an aphrodisiac to the women in the school.

The harem's erotic past seeks to return in full force, as if it could crawl inside the nun's habits and overwhelm them with desire.

Their vows are not permanent.  Not lifelong.  They are renewed from year to year.  So in any given year a nun may choose not to renew her vows.  Fair enough.

Sister Ruth will make this choice.

Mr. Dean has gotten to her, gotten under her skin, and she cannot take it any more.  She turns civilian.  Puts on a red dress.  And turns the applying of lipstick into the most carnal of actions.

Something is in the air.

Or in this case, something is not in the air.  Oxygen.  The high altitude is dizzying their minds.

Is it any wonder that the devil took Jesus up to "an exceedingly high mountain" to tempt him?

Maybe Sister Clodagh can do something before something goes wrong.


Jack Cardiff won the Academy Award for Cinematography-Color for this film.

Alfred Junge won the Academy Award for Art Direction, Set Direction for this film.  As Production Designer, he was in charge of both.

Emeric Pressburger adapted the screenplay from the novel by Rumer Godden.  She also wrote the novel The River, which French legend Jean Renoir adapted in 1951.

Jean Renoir filmed The River on location in India, shipping over the cameras, filmstock, and equipment.

Michael Powell before him chose the opposite.  He built the Himalayas inside a Pinewood sound stage.  He used models, miniatures, paintings on glass, and matte paintings to simulate the mountains and the dizzying height.

He patterned his paintings after Walt Disney.

And he achieved profound results.

The wind alone has the feel of authenticity.


There are two downsides to this film, however.

The script is one-sided and the acting is pushed into overindulgent hysteria.

While the film may be trying to humanize the nuns by making them vulnerable to sensual desire, it goes so far that it fails to give them a spiritual life.

Rather than coming across as otherwise strong nuns who are tempted by a strange force in a strange place, they are rather portrayed as shallow, petty, jealous, frustrated women who just happen to be wearing habits.

With any occupation on film, the viewer desires the character to be good at what he does.  But these nuns are incompetent.

There is no treatment of the role of faith or the power of prayer or the fruit of the spirit or the joy of service.  They do not even seem to love people.

They are just there to work in an assigned task, and they do not seem to be very happy about it.

So the temptation is not that great.  On the contrary, it is practically expected.

This is surprising in light of the fact that Pressburger turned in a more spiritually nuanced script just three years before in A Canterbury Tale (1944), which we saw yesterday.

When emotion is not earned, it lapses into sentimentality.

This is further exacerbated by the director's insistence upon hysteria.

Bertrand Tavernier confirms our disappointment when, in an introduction on the Criterion disc, he reveals that Kathleen Byron wanted to play the role of Sister Ruth in a restrained and nuanced way, but the director pushed her into a more histrionic portrayal.

As it is, the role of Sister Ruth is juicy, and Byron was up to the task.  If Powell had allowed her to play it more fully, as she knew how to do, then it would have been an even greater, perhaps historic, role.

This is a flawed film.

So much attention was placed on the creating of the set and the colors and the paintings and the special effects, that the script and the acting were given short shrift.

It is not that the film is too erotic and not spiritual enough.  It is that the film is not erotic enough because it is not spiritual enough.

When two forces collide to create conflict, both must be powerful in order to substantiate one another.  It is nothing for a dominate sports team to play a weakling and beat them.  It is everything for a team to triumph over a worthy opponent.

For the eroticism to be powerful, the spirituality should be powerful as well.

Otherwise, there is no real case of the "human heart in conflict with itself."  It is just giving in to what was logically bound to happen anyway.